Monday, July 20, 2020

Designing an imaginary home

Tired of all the negativity, I spent a couple of hours the other day looking through The Cottage Journal's Facebook pictures.  After awhile, I started "designing" a home with all the cozy pictures I liked.  This one shows a bright, airy bedroom and — look! — there are books on the bed.  Clawdia could gaze in two different directions from these windows.

I like these shelves, but mine would be filled with books, not doo-dads and pictures.  If you know me, you can already spot the theme:  books, books, and more books.  Yes, I own other things, but why would anyone waste bookshelf space on anything but books?

Here's a nice, little nook where I ccould read while eating or nibbling junk food.  What a great view I'd have whenever I raised my eyes from the page to ponder what I've just read.  Yes, this picture also has books already there, along with fruit, flowers, a muffin, and a cup of tea.

This is the photo which got me started.  It looks so relaxing, sitting out in the garden or swinging gently on a cool day.  (Some of you may know we've been under a heat advisory in St. Louis.)  The nice thing about living in a retirement center, though, is not having to mow the grass.  I guess I'll just have to hire someone to do it in my imaginary home.

I like the looks of this mountain home from The Cottage Journal.  There are not a lot of steps up to the front door, for one thing.  That matters for older folks.  This photo and the one above show a bit of a problem, since I don't want stairs to climb in my make-believe mansion.  We'll just have to change the design a bit.  Let's pretend I know what I'm doing.

My book blogger friend Nancy toured part of England in 2011, though I just discovered some of her photos on Facebook.  If this imaginary home is an English cottage, I'll just imagine myself in an English town by going through Nancy's photos of the countryside, like this one taken near Lynton and Lynmouth.  Would you like to come visit me, when I finish building my country cottage in the clouds?

2 comments:

jenclair said...

Looking at pictures of homes, rooms, and yards/gardens is an interesting pastime. Usually, when I find a really cozy look, I'm aware that I could never have pulled it off, but I find it comforting anyway. Would I ever have chosen all that yellow in the first pic, doubtful; however, that bedroom would make me so happy that I wouldn't ever want to leave.

Bonnie Jacobs said...

I have never before tried to imagine a home from somebody else's pictures, but this was kind of fun to do. When my husband and I built a house in 1965, we had three young children and I chose pale yellow for the kitchen, which was never my favorite room in the house. I hoped it would make the kitchen more cheerful, and I think it worked for me. Like you, I can't imagine choosing yellow for a bedroom. But because this photo made me feel good, it's the one I chose to put at the top of my blog post.